Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

Harvey Fierstein’s legendary career has transported him from community theater in Brooklyn, to the lights of Broadway, to the absurd excesses of Hollywood and back. He’s received accolades and awards for acting in and/or writing an incredible string of hit plays, films, and TV shows.

Growing up in small-town Ohio isn't easy, particularly when you're a closeted gay kid surrounded by...no one openly gay. Luckily, Danny Pellegrino grew up in the '90s, coming of age when the internet opened up a whole new world for a curious kid itching for life outside of Midwest suburbia.

The provocative best seller She's Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan's fresh voice, She's Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret.

As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, “Bakla, bakla!,” a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita. Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines’ informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a “horse Barbie” due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines’ highest-earning trans pageant queen.

In Florida, one of the first things you’re taught as a child is that if you’re ever chased by a wild alligator, the only way to save yourself is to run away in zigzags. It’s a lesson on survival that has guided much of Edgar Gomez’s life. Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary, and learning to see the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach.

In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.

Growing up queer in a conservative Midwestern town, Gabe Montesanti never felt comfortable in her own skin. A competitive swimmer, she turned to perfectionism and self-control to create a sense of safety, only to develop an eating disorder and constantly second-guess her instincts. When she enters graduate school in St. Louis, she is determined to put the baggage of her childhood behind her.

Before she became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016 at the age of twenty-six, Sarah McBride struggled with the decision to come out—not just to her family but to the students of American University, where she was serving as student body president. She’d known she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn’t until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country.

Jazz could not contain Fred Hersch. Hersch's prodigious talent as a sideman - a pianist who played with the giants of the 20th century in the autumn of their careers, including Art Farmer and Joe Henderson - blossomed further in the '80s and beyond into a compositional genius that defied the boundaries of bop, sweeping in elements of pop, classical, and folk to create a wholly new music.

For the first time, in her own words, Nicole tells the story of her journey from childhood in rural Maine to the spotlights of Hollywood, sharing the lessons she’s learned along the way. With clever wit and unflinching honesty, she tackles some of the most insidious messaging absorbed by queer kids and all young women, from the idea that any one thing can (or should) ever really “fix” you, to wondering what’s wrong with you when things don’t always feel better, and reminding us that, sometimes, a happy ending is only the beginning of the story.

Today, Gigi Gorgeous is beloved for her critically acclaimed documentary, her outrageous sense of humor, her no-holds-barred honesty, and her glam Hollywood lifestyle. Ten years ago, she was a gawky Canadian teen named Gregory. In He Said, She Said, Gigi brings us on her personal journey from Gregory to Gigi, going deeper than ever before and exposing her vulnerability behind each struggle and triumph, with her signature humor at every moment.

Born to indigenous working-class Mexican immigrants in San Diego in the 1970s, Jesse Leon’s childhood was violently ruptured. A dangerous and harrowing encounter at a local gift shop when he was eleven years old left Jesse with a deadly secret. Hurt, alone, and scared for his life, Jesse numbed his pain by losing himself in the hyper-masculine culture of the streets and wherever else he could find it—in alcohol, drugs, and prostitution.

La niñez de Jesse fue destrozada de forma violenta. Nació en San Diego, en los años setenta, hijo de inmigrantes mexicanos e indígenas de la clase obrera. Cuando tenía once años, un encuentro en una tienda de regalos lo dejó con un secreto aterrador entre manos. Herido, con el apoyo de nadie y temiendo por su vida, Jesse se perdió en el mundo híper masculino de las calles de San Diego, donde silenció su dolor con lo que fuera que encontrara: alcohol, drogas y prostitución.

At the National Council of Churches, Robert Spike had organized American churches to support the passage of both the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, to march in Selma, and to organize in Mississippi. An important White leader in the Black civil rights struggle, he helped the LBJ White House pass legislation and write crucial civil rights speeches. In the midst of what he described as "the dirtiest fight of my life" while struggling to save a federal Mississippi education program, he was viciously murdered in Columbus, Ohio.

As his parents watched their restaurant business collapse in the wake of the Great Recession, Michael Sayman was googling “how to code". Within a year, he had launched an iPhone app that was raking in thousands of dollars a month, enough to keep his family afloat - and in America. Entirely self-taught, Sayman headed from high school straight into the professional world, and by the time he was 17, he was Facebook’s youngest employe ever, building new features that wowed its founder Mark Zuckerberg and are now being used by more than half a billion people every day.